The present invention relates to preserving privacy in a federated coalition network when providing information in response to an information request query. In more specific embodiments, linear network coding is used to transform the information into multiple packets.
Federated coalition networks are distributed networks formed by nodes owned by different parties. Each party represents an independent entity, for example, an organization or a company, who wants to enable data sharing with other parties in order to advance a common objective. Examples of when a federated coalition network might be used include multinational military tasks, ad hoc humanitarian cooperation, and international scientific projects. A federated coalition network may include links over unreliable segments such as wireless networks.